Alex > Recent Status Updates

Is Bronk the one?

This is somehow simultaneously obnoxious and seductive. Note: it’s dedicated to Steven Moore, who thought highly of Brossard. Though superficially this seems to fit within the Moore canon, I’m not sure the mind responsible for it was operating on the level of folks like Gaddis, Theroux, Wallace etc.

The phrase “Chinese virus” appears on this page. Heh.

I don’t know why anything is happening but I almost don’t care.

Come, embrace misanthropy.

Y’all ready to sacrifice some teachers or what?

It's losing some of its vitality at this point.

Balancing out Bernhard with a bit of beautiful, everything-is-connected BS.

Quite a few typos in this edition.

Yeah, it’s still super early, but I’m getting a very Berhard’s-Best vibe right now. Of course, this is only my third.

This must have been dear to Gaddis.

Understanding a novel’s flaws often deepens my appreciation for it. Seeing those flaws justified by readers with reactionary politics sometimes makes me like it less. I get that this is a personal problem.

Interesting that I picked this up after losing interest in The Blind Assassin. It kind of pokes at the question of why I enjoy one book and not another, particularly since everything I’d heard about Atwood’s book made me think I would love it... Anywho, for some reason, I just did not give a hoot about the central mystery of that one, while Baldwin’s succeeds in intriguing me. Similar device, different effect.

Bookcase, A-Z: Part IV

Bookcase, A-Z: Part III

Some of this is genius. Some of this is... a lot.

Dogs and desert.

My grandfather passed away last week. Rereading this as a kind of therapy, I guess...

Bookcase, A-Z: Part II

Obnoxious. Next!

Thus begins my project, Read the Bookcase, A-Z.

Of the Woolf I’ve read - Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, Flush - this seems most similar to To the Lighthouse. Lucky for me, that’s my favorite one.

“The oppressed has only one solution: to deny the harmony of mankind from which an attempt is made to exclude him, to prove that he is a man and that he is free by revolting against the tyrants.”